Thai Cuisine Lemon Grass Cookbook: Red Curry Chicken

When planning the dinner menu for this month, I had a different cookbook in mind for this week, but sometimes well-made plans need to be changed.

The Moms

This week I hosted our neighborhood moms for our once a month meeting.  These gals are great and I wanted to make a special dinner for them.  When I was growing up we always prepared enough food to feed the masses, so true to family tradition I made enough to feed an army.  In our family the saying goes, "If you go home hungry, it's your own fault."

The menu consisted of:

Fresh Spring Rolls
Sushi Rolls
Tom Kha Gai (Coconut Chicken Soup)
Red Curry Chicken
Chicken Satay
Pad Sei Ew (Beef with Wide Rice Noodles)
Tapioca Pudding
Black Rice Pudding
Sweet Rice Cake

I had initially planned to make Pad Thai too, but the above proved to be a lot of food!

I just finished a small bowl of the delightfully, slightly spicy, Red Curry Chicken so thought I'd share this recipe with you first.

Mmmm.....Lunch!

All the recipes are from the Quick and Easy Cookbook Thai Cuisine Lemon Grass Cookbook by Panurat Poladitmontri and Judy Lew.  We had dinner with friends a couple weeks ago and they introduced me to this cookbook.  When I got home I immediately ordered if from Amazon for a whopping $1.47!  I have a number of Thai cookbooks, but what I loved about this one is the simple directions.  Each recipe gives a list of ingredients and then provides a photo of the ingredients.  This makes shopping at the Asian grocery much easier if you're unfamiliar with ingredients.

If you just do a search on Amazon for this title, you'll probably find this book which is probably a newer edition.  If the one I bought wasn't so inexpensive, I would have probably bought this one.

http://www.amazon.com/Quick-Easy-Thai-Cuisine-Cookbooks/dp/4889960945/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327088727&sr=8-1

If you do a search by ISBN #, you'll find the one I bought.   It's 4-915249-90-5.  My search of this book today did not bring up affordable prices.  Keep your eye out for it!  It's a GREAT find!

Red Curry Chicken


Ingredients


14 oz. can coconut milk
1 tablespoon red curry paste
1/4 cup fish sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
1 lb. chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces
5-8 kaffir lime leaves
1/4 cup fresh Thai basil leaves

Combine 7 ounces of the coconut milk with curry paste.

Coconut milk and red curry

Add chicken, fish sauce and sugar.  Bring to a gentle boil and cook until chicken is done.

Chicken ready to go!  I had a huge pile of chicken because I think
I quadrupled this recipe!

Add remaining coconut milk and lime leaves.  Heat through. Garnish with basil just before serving.

Serve over Jasmine rice.